Killer in N.Y. rampage formerly lived in Dover

HERKIMER, N.Y. — A man killed by police after a shooting rampage that left four people dead had worked at a factory in Rochester, N.H., and had lived in Dover.

Kurt Myer was a mystery in the small New York town he lived in, a stranger to his neighbors and a man of few words, even at a bar where he regularly drank Coors Light and listened to, but never sang, karaoke.

A former boss who worked with gunman Kurt Myers for 20 years described him as a quiet and nervous but intelligent and congenial man who was a fan of World War II trivia — though a recent encounter with his old employee left him unsettled.

Steve Copperwheat, who hired Myers as a machine operator in the early 1980s at Waterbury Felt, a manufacturer of industrial textiles, said he encountered him in a Wal-Mart parking lot in New York three months ago after not seeing him in about 10 years.

“I yelled over to him, and he looked at me, said my name, said he was retired and just went booking away,” Copperwheat said. “It was almost like he didn’t want anybody to know where he was. He was trying to be very distant, which surprised me. The whole conversation was really spooky.”

Copperwheat said Myers lived in Dover and worked at Northeastern Nonwovens in Rochester, where he got injured and disappeared.

Copperwheat said Myers stayed in New Hampshire for a few months.

Police don’t know why the 64-year-old Myers, whose final killing was of an FBI dog, chose the locations or victims. He didn’t appear to be close to his family even though they have lived in the area for generations, and police interviews with relatives and neighbors have produced little.

About the only clue is his cryptic query before he opened fire on customers in a barbershop where he used to get his hair cut: “Do you remember me?”

Myers died early Thursday in a gunfight with officers in an abandoned tavern where he holed up 19 hours earlier after walking into the barbershop and a car care shop and shooting six men, four fatally.

The gunman was a loner, never married. Neighbors in this poor upstate New York town say he rarely spoke. The barkeeps who served him several times a week for a decade didn’t even know his name.

Copperwheat, now the owner of Environmental Composites in Herkimer, said Myers had “always seemed to be in a rush. Walking, talking — everything he did was fast.”

Myers seemed to be quite intelligent and was fond of World War II trivia. “He was really a buff on dates,” Copperwheat said. “Once he got upset because one of the girls in the office didn’t know when Pearl Harbor was.”

The business was sold and moved several times, with Myers and other workers moving with it to several locations in central New York and eventually Dover, N.H., in 2003, Copperwheat said. There, Myers shared an apartment for a while with several other workers.

“I never had a problem with him arguing with anybody or fighting with anybody,” Copperwheat said. “He just kind of kept to himself.”

The shootings rattled Herkimer and neighboring Mohawk, villages about 170 miles northwest of New York City. Utica, about 13 miles down the New York State Thruway, is the nearest sizeable city, with about 60,000 residents.

Myers’ sister lives with her family in Barneveld, just a short drive from Mohawk and Herkimer. There was no car in the driveway on Thursday, and nobody answered the door or phone.

His brother, Lance Myers, died in federal prison in 1982 at age 31. He had been serving a four-year sentence for an embezzlement conspiracy at Oneida National Bank, where he had been a manager.

Myers’ rampage started with a fire in his apartment in Mohawk on Wednesday morning. He then drove around the corner to John’s Barber Shop and used a shotgun to kill two customers, Harry Montgomery, 68, and Michael Ransear, 57, a retired correction officer.

The barbershop’s owner, John Seymour, and another customer, Dan Haslauer, were wounded and hospitalized.

Myers then drove to Gaffey’s Fast Lube in Herkimer and used the shotgun to kill Michael Renshaw and Thomas Stefka. Renshaw was a 23-year employee of the state correction department, and Stefka worked at Gaffey’s and played guitar at Mohawk Reform Church.

State police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico called Myers’ shotgun attacks “unprovoked and random.” Myers did, though, appear to have tenuous connections to the barbershop.

Seymour, the owner, told his sister that Myers, who used to be a customer but hadn’t visited for a couple of years, walked in and said, “Hi, John, do you remember me?”

Seymour replied, “`Yes, Kurt, how are you?”’ his sister Mary Hornett said. “And then he just started shooting.”

State police and FBI tactical teams entered the first floor of a building in Herkimer around 8 a.m. Thursday to end the standoff, D’Amico said. Myers opened fire at officers, killing an FBI dog that was behind a door, D’Amico said. Police returned fire, killing Myers. No officers were injured.

The FBI tactical dog, a 2-year-old Czech German shepherd named Ape, had just completed its training a month ago and was on its second mission.

Traci Randall, who lived next door to Myers, said the only time she remembers speaking to him was when he yelled at her son because he thought the boy had shot an air pellet at his red Jeep.

“He would walk by himself,” she said. “He was kind of a loner. No wife.”

Michele Mlinar, bartender at Cangee’s Bar and Grille in Herkimer, said Myers used to come at night on weekends and listen to karaoke but stopped showing up last summer.

She said he always wore a flannel shirt tucked neatly into his jeans and sat alone at the bar.